Cartoon by Ellen Weiss

By this point, most students have heard about the newborn child who was left in a  dumpster in the Chapel Ridge Apartment complex in West Emporia on Friday, Oct. 22.

When the child was found, it had been in the dumpster for around an hour. The mother of the child, Christina Devine, an ESU student, was questioned and taken into police custody that morning. More information on the incident can be found in the news story on page one of this issue.

To The Bulletin staff it is apparent that this news is beyond the point of tragic. Few words can accurately describe the heartbreaking story of this child’s first hour on Earth.

A terrible thing has happened at ESU and the Emporia community at large. This homecoming baby was brought into this world in perhaps some of the most horrible circumstances possible.

It would be all too easy to write this baby’s story off as terrible and leave it at that. But the opinion The Bulletin staff is that this cannot happen. As members of this community, we have a responsibility.

Emporia is a town full of wonderful people, people whose values and senses of moral dignity are both strong and longstanding. This community looks out for its fellow citizens. When one of our own is in trouble, this town has shown a brilliant ability to respond with sympathy and empathetic actions.

Citizens of Emporia, this child needs your help.

The Bulletin staff has decided to take a step to ensure that this child’s life does not continue in the same direction it started in. The Bulletin, in cooperation with the ESU Alumni Foundation, is in the process of instituting a scholarship fund for this homecoming baby. The details of this fund have not been worked out completely at this point, but anyone interested in contributing to this fund should read The Bulletin in the coming weeks as more information becomes available.

This child’s birthplace will forever be Emporia. It is up to us to show that our community will not allow this to go unnoticed and help to give this child the life he, despite all the odds, deserves.

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The Guaranteed Grade Point Average scholarship will soon be completely eliminated from Emporia State’s financial aid program and will be replaced with the Hornet Award. According to Elaine Henrie, director of financial aid, potentially 190 students will receive the guaranteed GPA scholarship for next year, but the official count won’t be released until final grades are in.

The new program, which was started two years ago, actually offers students more money per semester although the award will only extend over two years instead of four.

“Students are pretty excited about having a two year opportunity we found,” said Laura Eddy, director of Admissions. “I don’t think any schools in the state of Kansas guarantee (scholarship money) for four years. That’s something in the past.”

Now students will have the opportunity to be awarded scholarships based on both the ACT score and their high school GPA. On the low end of the scale, students with an ACT of 22 and a GPA of 3.0, $700 is available. On the high end, $2,000 will be awarded to students with an ACT of 29 or higher and a GPA of 3.75 or higher.

The previous award amounts were $500 for an ACT score between 21-23 or a GPA of 3.5. The highest award amount on the old program was $1,200 for an ACT score of 27 or higher.

Eddy said that the change in program has not hurt recruiting.

For third and fourth year students who no longer apply to receive a GPA scholarship, more awards will be available from individual departments.

“(When funds come) we will push more dollars out to the departments to award,” Henrie said. “It will be a process. That will be the goal to get it pushed out to the department so that you work with your department for the last two years.”

Transfer students will also still be eligible to apply for the Hornet award.

Students who started college on the GPA scholarship will continue to receive the award until they reach their four year maximum on the award.

“Anyone who started under that, we certainly didn’t pull the rug from under them and change it,” Henrie said. “We were going to make sure that were following all the way through with that. That wouldn’t have been fair or the right thing to do.”

One benefit of the new program according to Eddy, is that it gives students more opportunities to receive scholarship money.

“We’ve been able to add an early application scholarship, a valedictorian scholarship,” Eddy said. “In the past student’s would ask us, ‘what else can I apply for?’, and really there was nothing else. It’s given more opportunities.”

The Guaranteed GPA award was created over 10 years ago under ESU’s previous president, Kay Schallenkamp.

“It didn’t require any kind of application nor did it look at students in total,” Henrie said. “It worked somewhat. It really did not take into account both the ACT and the high school GPA. The student’s who actually get that money have been more successful than some of the students in the past because we were only relying on one aspect.”

With the old program, students who had a high ACT score but low grades in high school could still receive a large award. In the reciprocal situation, there was really no way for students to get any scholarship at all.

“When we are using donor money, it is pretty important to have some accountability,” Henrie said. “We had to find the most effective ways to spend those dollars. It becomes accountability, that you took your high school education seriously and that you tried your best on your ACT.”

There was also no application process with the GPA scholarship.

“ESU was kind of an outlier for not requiring a scholarship application,” Henrie said. “If you’re really interested in a scholarship, you have to do something to apply. Rather than being based on scholarship it was almost more based on entitlement. If you’re a student who works pretty hard, I think that is a significant difference to earn your scholarship.”

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Hua Jiang, a certified pianist and ESU music student, performs “Sposalizio” by Franz Liszt Tuesday night in Heath Recital Hall. Jiang was one of five students chosen to perform at the Emporia State Music Department Honors Recital and will be pursuing his master’s degree in piano performance at ESU in the fall of 2009. KELLEN JENKINS/THE BULLETIN

The annual Emporia State Music Department Honors Recital was held last Tuesday in Heath Recital Hall. Due to departmental budget cuts, the recital was not held in the form of a scholarship competition, as it has been in previous years.

“We use to offer scholarships with this, this is the first year we haven’t been able to do so.” said Terrisa Ziek, music instructor and horn specialist who has coordinated the honors recital for the past three years. “So due to budget restraints, I hope that next year we’ll be able to do that, because like every other area we’ve been having to cut back.”

In past years, the entire music faculty would attend the concert and listen to all the performances and select a first, second, and third place. This year, however, students auditioned to perform in the recital at the end of last semester.

“What we decided to do this past year was I invited some retired faculty members to come during finals week and on a Wednesday night they heard 12 students perform entire pieces and then they chose these five students (that performed at the recital). They felt these were the best students.”

The retired faculty members that judged the performers are from the Emporia and Topeka area. Having retired members helped ensure there were no biases among the judges.

“They did a wonderful job,” Ziek said. “They didn’t know any of the students, which was really good, because they could just come in and listen. They weren’t familiar with the music and, being professionals, they were very thoughtful and considered everyone’s music.”

The retired faculty members selected five students to perform at the Honors Recital, all of which are juniors or seniors.

Hua Jiang, certificate student in piano, performed a piece written by Franz Liszt. According to Ziek, Jiang was born in China and received his first piano lesson from his mother.

The second performer, Nicholas Newhouse, graduate student of music in percussion, played a piece by Bach using the marimba. Ziek said that Newhouse has performed with various groups throughout the region including the premier of the Kansas Concert Opera.

Elizabeth Kosko, senior music major in percussion performance, played the timpani to an Elliot Carter piece. Kosko is also currently the drum line instructor and Percussion Ensemble director for Emporia High School, Ziek said.

“I really liked the timpani piece,” said Aaron Cochran, sophomore digital audio major. “It’s kind of different to hear a timpani as a solo instrument… I had never seen that done before.”

Karsten Burns, senior music major in percussion performance, performed a piece by Keiko Abe on the marimba. Ziek said that Burns teaches private percussion lessons and also plays with several local bands.

Ryan Rhodes, senior music education major, finished with a tuba performance. With the help of Yaokun Yang on the piano, Rhodes performed a Jan Koetsier piece. Rhodes and Yang tied for first place in last year’s honors recital. Cochran said he was surprised with Rhodes’s performance.

“I really liked the last performance,” Cochran said. “He did a lot of things I didn’t know a tuba could do – it was pretty cool to hear.”

Rhodes wasn’t surprised that someone would initially doubt the performance capabilities of a tuba.

“I’ve been playing the tuba since I was in the eighth or ninth grade,” Rhodes said. “And that’s the thing you get a lot with tuba performances. People say, ‘I didn’t know that a tuba could sound like that.’”

Zeik felt that each of the students’ performances were successful.

“We have so many talented students here and it’s just such a really great thing to get them out there playing and show them to the community,” Ziek said.  “I enjoy working with them, they’re all responsible and professional in their behavior.”

Brett Mize/The Bulletin

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According to legend around Emporia State’s biology department, the late Robert F. Clarke’s career in Biology began in a ditch in the early 1950s.

“The professors here at that time saw (Clarke) standing along the road, somewhere near Emporia and he was… catching little things in a ditch after a rain,” said Thomas Eddy, biology professor. “I guess the conversation was that he really liked this kind of stuff…his little animals and the environment of course.

They said ‘well do you know, you could take some classes and learn more about this’, and they talked him into coming here… He really had the makings of a scholar, but he just never had the opportunity and really did not know that those opportunities existed.”

In memory of Clarke, who died in 2008, and his history at ESU, his children Linda and John Clarke have established the Robert F. Clarke Memorial Biology Scholarship to help students today take advantage of the same opportunities that Clarke discovered here when he began school in 1952.

John and Linda Clarke have followed in their father’s footsteps and earned bachelors and master’s degrees at ESU.

“My dad was an educator all his life and he loved the college,” said Linda Clarke. “We thought this would be a beautiful way to help out students, especially graduate students since they have a harder time getting money.”

According to the financial aid office, there are currently no funds for the scholarship yet, but donations were requested for the scholarship instead of traditional flowers at his funeral.

Once money has been allocated for the scholarship, the award will be available to full time biology graduate students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. It is anticipated that students will be able to begin the application process sometime in February.

Born in Virginia in 1919, Clarke came to Kansas after serving in the Merchant Marines in World War II to get married. He was working as a railroad engineer and was a stationary steam engineer on campus when he first came to school, according to Roger Ferguson, former student and laboratory education technician.

As an illustrator, Clarke drew many of the animals in The Kansas State Naturalist, such as those that appear in Frogs and Toads of Kansas, which he also wrote.

“He was a remarkably good artist,” Eddy said. “That was one of his skills.”

Clarke’s appreciation for animals was nurtured at ESU in ways he did not know were possible until he was discovered in the infamous ditch. After earning his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma studying lizards, he put his education to use by writing over 50 publications on herpetology. He taught for over 30 years on subjects such as zoology and the natural history of vertebrates.

After he retired in 1990, Clarke continued keeping in contact with his friends in the biology department.

“After he retired he got on email, so everybody who knew Clarke this continual set of jokes every day,” said Dwight Moore, biology professor. “For years he was in charge of the opening joke at the (Southwestern Association of Naturalists) meeting.

Aside from his academic accomplishments, Clarke has been recognized for his efforts in adding the Chickadee Check-Off program in Kansas to protect non-game wildlife.

“He was the main force behind it for sure,” Ferguson said. “You can find it on your state tax form if you want to donate money.”

In his time at ESU, Clarke gained the admiration of students and faculty alike.

“He was an extraordinary good teacher,” Eddy said. “Students liked him. He was fun to be around”

Students today can still benefit from Clarke’s contributions through the remnants of his works in the Naturalist, his publications and illustrations and the newly instated scholarship.

Cait Costelloe/The Bulletin

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